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Road Accidents Scotland 2003

Figure 5

The casualty reduction targets for 2010

The casualty reduction targets for the year 2010

In March 2000, the UK Government, the Scottish Executive and the National Assembly for Wales announced a new national road safety strategy and casualty reduction targets for 2010. These new targets were introduced to focus on achieving a further substantial improvement in road safety over the next ten years, with particular emphasis on child casualties. The new targets, which are given in the document "Tomorrow's roads - safer for everyone", are based on the annual average casualty levels over the period 1994 to 1998. By 2010 it is hoped that there will be, compared with the average for 1994-98:

• a 40% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured in road accidents.
• a 50% reduction in the number of children killed or seriously injured; and
• a 10% reduction in the slight casualty rate, expressed as the number of people slightly injured per 100 million vehicle kilometres.

Progress towards the 2010 casualty reduction targets

The charts on the page opposite show progress towards the casualty reduction targets for 2010. The thick black lines show the figures that have been recorded so far, the horizontal dashed lines show the baseline averages, and the dotted lines going downwards indicate how the figures would have to fall if the targets for 2010 were to be achieved by means of a constant percentage reduction in each year. The method of deriving these 'target lines' is described at the end of this section.

With this method, the target lines imply the following reductions from the 1994-98 baselines by the year 2003:

Killed or seriously injured: 22.5%

Child killed or seriously injured: 29.3%

Slight casualty rate (per 100m veh-km) 5.1%

Therefore any falls which are greater than these suggest more rapid progress than the relevant indicative target line.

The figures relating to each target:

• There were 3,271 people killed or seriously injured in 2003, 32% (1,567) below the 1994-98 average of 4,838. The figure for 2003 is below the relevant indicative target line, and therefore the reduction so far has been greater than would be needed to achieve the 2010 target fall of 40% by means of a constant annual percentage reduction.
• 431 children were killed or seriously injured in 2003, 49% (411) below the 1994-98 average of 842. The figure for 2003 is also below the relevant indicative target line, representing rapid progress towards the 2010 target of a 50% reduction.
• The slight casualty rate of 36.71 casualties per 100 million vehicle kilometres in 2003 was 21% below the 1994-98 baseline average of 46.42, so the 2010 target of a 10% reduction has been achieved.

Killed or seriously injured casualties by mode of transport

As noted above, the relevant indicative "target line" figure for 2003 is 22.5% below the 1994-98 baseline average. The top part of Table G shows that, in 2003, the numbers of killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties for most modes of transport were well below this target line, with falls such as 44% for pedestrian KSI casualties and 33% for car KSI casualties. However, there was one exception: motorcycle KSI casualties rose by 17%.

Table G
Killed and seriously injured casualties by mode of transport

Child killed and seriously injured casualties by mode of transport

1. Light goods vehicles and heavy goods vehicles.
2. Taxis, minibuses and other modes of transport
3. A percentage change is not shown if the baseline figure is small.

Over half of all the 3,271 KSI casualties in 2003 were car users. The total of 1,685 car KSI casualties in 2003 was 33% below the 1994-98 baseline average of 2,501, and therefore better than the indicative target line reduction. There were 771 pedestrian KSI casualties in 2003, 44% fewer than the annual average of 1,376 for the period 1994-98. However, the number of motorcycle KSI casualties in 2003 was 417, an increase of 17% (62) from the 1994-98 average: this was the only category of road user for which the figure in 2003 was above the indicative target line. There were 138 pedal cycle KSI casualties, 45% below the 1994-98 average. The numbers of KSI casualties were smaller for each of the remaining categories of road user (bus/coach, goods vehicle, and others).

Child killed or seriously injured casualties by mode of transport

The indicative target line figure for 2003 is 29.3% below the 1994-98 average. The middle part of Table G shows that, in 2003, the figures for the three main categories of child road user casualty were well below the relevant indicative target lines, with one fall of 36% and two of 52%.

About two-thirds of the 431 children killed or seriously injured (KSI) in 2003 were pedestrians. The number of child pedestrian KSI casualties in 2003 was 272, 290 (52%) below the 1994-98 average of 562, and therefore better than the indicative target line reduction. There were 93 child car KSI casualties in 2003, a fall of 52 (36%) from the 1994-98 average of 145, and therefore below the indicative target line. Child pedal cycle KSI casualties in 2003 were below the indicative target line: there were 48, a reduction of 52% from the 1994-98 average of 100. There are few child KSI casualties for other modes of transport, so small fluctuations in their numbers can cause apparently large percentage changes from the 1994-98 baseline average levels.

Slightly injured casualties by mode of transport

By 2003, the indicative target line has a reduction of 5.1% in the slight casualty rate. Because of the limited availability of detailed reliable road traffic estimates for Scotland, the bottom part of Table G shows the numbers of slight casualties (rather than slight casualty rates) for various categories of road user. The table also shows the overall total volume of traffic and the overall slight casualty rate. Most of the road user categories had percentage falls in their numbers of slight casualties that were better than that of the slight casualty rate's indicative target line. Almost two-thirds of slight casualties in 2003 were car users. The total number of car user slight casualties in 2003 was 10,037, 8% below the 1994-98 average of 10,859, and therefore better than the slight casualty rate's indicative target line fall of 5.1%. There were 2,208 slight pedestrian casualties 27% less than the 1994-98 average of 3,009, a reduction much better than that of the indicative target line for the slight casualty rate. Bus and coach user slight casualties totalled 816 in 2003, 11% fewer than the 1994-98 average, the number of pedal cyclist slight casualties (663) was 36% below the baseline average, goods vehicle user slight casualties (539) were 8% below the baseline average and "other" road user slight casualties (476) were 5% less than the baseline average. However, there was a rise in motorcyclist slight casualties (696 in 2003, 20% above the 1994-98 average).

Assessing progress towards the casualty reduction targets

The indicative target lines shown in Figure 3

One way of assessing progress towards the targets is to compare actual casualty numbers in each year with an indicative line that starts at the baseline figure in 1996 and falls, by a constant percentage reduction in each subsequent year, to the target for 2010. This is the approach adopted by the GB Road Safety Advisory Panel. The indicative line starts at the baseline figure in 1996 because that is the middle year of the 'baseline' period. Other approaches could have been used: there are many ways of producing lines that indicate how casualty numbers might fall fairly steadily to the targets for 2010.

The method adopted to produce the indicative target lines shown in Figure 3 involves a constant percentage reduction in each year after 1996. The resulting indicative target lines represent the percentages of the baseline averages which are shown in the table below. They are not straight lines, because of the "compounding over the years" effect of constant annual percentage reductions (to two decimal places, the falls are: 3.58% p.a. for killed or seriously injured casualties; 4.83% p.a. for child killed or seriously injured casualties; and 0.75% p.a. for the slight casualty rate).

Other statistics for monitoring progress

Table 40 in the main section of this publication shows the "baseline" figures for each local authority area for the first two targets (separately for trunk roads, local authority roads and all roads), along with the corresponding figures for each year from 1994 and the latest five years' averages. Table 41 provides figures for each local authority area related to the third target, and Table 42 shows figures for each Police Force area related to all three targets.

In addition, many other tables include the 1994-98 baseline averages.

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